Rodriguez was fluent in Spanish. At least the swear words. Fancy that. Mac waited until he got it out of his system.
“He’s the cop that busted me and my cousin,” Mac said neutrally. It had been a righteous bust. The Mercedes had been stolen, after all. “Why did he leave the force?”
“That I know,” Rodriguez said. “Couple years later he got booted off for excessive force. Grand jury failed to indict.”
No surprise, Mac thought. Cops had limited immunity to prosecution. Which basically meant if you were a cop and wanted to shoot someone, wear your uniform.
“When was this?” Mac asked.
Rodriguez was silent. “About six years ago? So, you were in Afghanistan? College?”
“Yeah. Or in transition,” Mac agreed. “Not that I would have cared. I wanted to be a sportswriter.”
Rodriguez grunted.
“What happened? Must have been serious if they actually booted him and made it stick.” Mac had a lot of respect for the police union. It protected their own. Rotten apples and all.
“He killed a kid,” Rodriguez said bluntly. “The kid sassed him, and Malloy shot him. He should have gone down for it, but he didn’t. Malloy said he was coming at him; thought he was hopped up on something. Kid had had his growth spurt — 12 years old and probably stood 6-feet tall. We lost a great future basketball player that day.”
Cop humor was dark.
“Damn it, Rodriguez,” Mac said. “Any drugs in his system?”
“No.”
“I suppose I can take it for granted it was a Black kid,” Mac said sourly.
Rodriguez was silent.
“It must not have been the first accusation of excessive force,” Mac mused.
Still silence.
“Anything on public record I can use?” Mac asked, understanding what the silence meant. It meant all the crazy shit was buried in personnel files. Maybe he should stop being a bit bitter that Driving While Black sent his cousin to jail, and be glad it wasn’t Black and Dead.
“Maybe,” Rodriguez said slowly. “Why ask me? Ask Janet. I think you all ran stories about it.” He paused. “You’re not in the office. Tell me you’re not in Arlington, Mac.”
“Not yet,” Mac said. “But I’m 10 minutes away.”
He filled Rodriguez in about Craig Anderson.
“No priors,” Rodriguez said eventually.
No surprise. Hard to sell guns in Washington state with a criminal record. Well, sell them legally, at any rate.
“Mac,” Rodriguez began.
Mac waited for him to finish the sentence. He didn’t.
“I’ll be careful, mom,” Mac said, amused.
“I knew Malloy,” Rodriguez said. “He’s a bit older than I am, but he’s a cop’s cop, you know? Ex-military, two ex-wives, and an alcohol problem.”
Mac snorted.
“And he had a hard-on about you and your cousin. Thought the judge had been too lenient on your cousin, and he was outraged that you weren’t tried as an adult and serving time instead of and I quote, ‘besmirching the uniform of a Marine,’.”
Mac frowned, did the math. “You must have been a rookie, back then?”
“When you were busted? Still on street patrol, but not a rookie anymore,” Rodriguez agreed. “But he was still grousing about it years later, Mac. He held court at the Oak Rail, you know, the cop bar? He’d drink and start talking about the ones that got away. He blamed liberal courts, restrictive laws on what cops could and couldn’t do, and that damn PC culture that meant he couldn’t call a sp-c a sp-c and a n—-ger a...,” he trailed off. “You get the picture.”
“And I was the case in point? A fucked-up kid in a stolen car? Jesus, Rodriguez, that’s daily news,” Mac said, incredulous.
“Yeah, but let’s not talk about the fact that you and your cousin weren’t joy riding on a lark,” the cop said dryly. “We managed to reduce our car theft numbers considerably when he busted you two.”
Mac laughed. “No comment.”
“No, what bothered him was that he thought you were both Black until he got a look at you, and then he decided you were Hispanic. So, he thought he’d bagged a two-fer, as he called it, and then the courts, and again this is a quote, ‘pussied out’.”
“I can see how you two would have been tight,” Mac observed. He might be Latino, he might be Black. He didn’t know. Bugged him sometimes. Seemed like every time he turned around, someone was asking him to fill out a form and state his race. And he didn’t have an answer. How could he? His mother wasn’t sure. Old news. He set it aside.
“I went out and bought a round at the Oak Rail to celebrate when they made his dismissal stick,” Rodriguez agreed. “Don’t get me wrong. You were just two examples in a whole litany of grievances he had. If he’d had his way, he would have been allowed to ride around on a horse and shoot anyone he thought deserved it.”
“Sounds like he did,” Mac said. “Except for the horse part.”
Twelve years old. Jesus H. Christ. And fuck his attempts to clean up his language.
“All of this is to say you really shouldn’t be going to see Malloy alone,” Rodriguez said.
“How sweet that you care,” Mac said.
“Mac,” he began.
“Look, Lieutenant,” Mac said. “Have you seen the newsroom staff? Who the hell am I to take as back up? Janet would be the best the newsroom has to offer, and I’m not even kidding. If I had someone else along, they’d just be someone I had to worry about protecting if things go bad.”
“Take that sidekick of yours.”
“Shorty? Shorty is a math teacher in Bellevue. He likes being a math teacher. He doesn’t want to have to carry a gun again ever.” They’d had a serious conversation about exactly that after Janet’s rescue. And Mac was determined to respect his views. He didn’t have that many friends to begin with. “Besides are you seriously suggesting I take a Filipino-Mexican as backup to talk to a racist ass of an ex-cop?”
“I’d ask the Arlington cops to do a drive by just in
